Mobile Learning

Early last year, Sue Waters of the Mobile Technology in TAFE podcast posted her video about the use of “spy glasses” (glasses or sunglasses with a built-in video camera), and how these can be used for recording first-person video footage for gathering assessment evidence or creating demonstration video clips.

While the cost of one of the units featured in Sue’s demo runs into the hundreds of dollars (and wireless units cost thousands), I’ve just come across a video tutorial on how to make a set of video-recording glasses for just A$50 or so – and they’ll do this kind of work just as well as Sue’s gear.

Looking at the components available on eBay, it would also appear to be possible to make a wireless version for a little extra, for situations where unsecured wires could pose a workplace hazard. If you have a particular need for capturing portable, mobile, first-person video for an educational activity or resource, this tutorial could save you thousands of dollars and/or allow many more of your students to participate than would otherwise be possible.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/1028544/how_to__spy_sunglasses.swf" width="400" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Original page: http://www.instructables.com/id/Covert-Spy-Sunglasses/

Tags: spyglasses video first person tutorial capture assessment mlearning m-learning mobilelearning “mobile learning” mobile-learning

I’m currently brushing up on my web programming and design skills in view of creating my very first web-based education site, for which I’ve already reserved a domain name and host… stay tuned.

I’d like the site to be designed and implemented (relatively) platform-independant: able to be used with ease from both desktop-based and mobile devices; and, to begin with, I’d like it to do just a few simple tasks, really well.  If that goes well, of course, there will be time for adding extra features later.

I have some grand plans of my own… but first I’m going to throw this out to you – my learning community – to see if anyone would like me to build into the site something that would help them with their teaching and learning practice. So:

If you could have one new tool to support online (and/or mobile) learning… what would it be?  And how would this improve the quality of (your) online/mobile teaching and/or learning?

Looking forward to hearing some of your ideas!!!!

technorati tags:programming, m-learning, mlearning, education, flexible, mobile learning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, teaching, learning, mobile, web2.0, clcommunity, online, e-learning, elearning, development

An interim report on a study on the educational impact of personal access to mobile learning devices has published an interim report with emerging recommendations resulting from their development and research project.

Among the emerging recommendations are findings on policy, technical issues and professional development, such as:

• When learners expect devices to be used, they are more likely to bring them to school every day and keep them charged. When all pupils in a class have their devices with them, the learning benefits are optimised.
• Where possible, all relevant staff – especially teaching assistants, ICT co-ordinators and teachers – should be provided with mobile devices.
• It is beneficial to ensure reliable wireless connectivity.
• It is useful to consider systems for dealing with breakages and temporary loss of use of devices. This may involve planning for temporary loan stock.
• Systems for storage of and access to work need to be developed. Teachers and learners need to access digital work to provide and receive feedback.
• Teachers benefit from having time to explore what the devices can do before integrating their use into planned learning.
• Using mobile devices is likely to increase learner autonomy. Teachers need to ensure that learners are able to evaluate resources, think critically and reflect.

The final reports will be published in about a year’s time; the interim report can be found here in Word or PDF format.

According to the latest figures from Forrester research, reported in one of Australia’s foremost periodicals, The Age, Australians are adopting mobile gadgets such as digital cameras, smart phones, and MP3 players far more enthusiastically than Americans:

The study found that 92% of Australian housholds owned some form of mobile electronic device, compared with just 76% in the USA.

“The disparity is even greater when it comes to digital still cameras – 69 per cent versus 51 per cent, respectively – and portable MP3 ownership – 33 per cent versus 20 per cent, respectively,” the study found.

This data correlates with my own ongoing comparisons between Australian and overseas mobile consumer markets, including the US market. I regularly buy a number of Australian and International periodicals, including the US Smartphone & PDA magazine, the UK edition of T3, and the Australian editions of T3, Roam (recently merged with T3) and Geare.

From my reading, I’ve noticed that while there’s a public perception that the US is a world leader in consumer technology, that lead is somewhat diminished in the mobile technology arena. For example, my perusal of the worldwide gadget mags makes me feel that many models of mobile phones are available in the UK and Australia well before they’re on the US market; and when they do come on to the market in the USA, many of the best mobile phone models are tied exclusively to a particular service provider. I haven’t noticed any such encumberances in the Australian mobile phone market, and I think it’s made for increased handset consumption and consumer interest here. Whatever the reason, Australia’s mobile phone stats are pretty amazing, as I recently documented:

According to the latest available market statistics, there are almost 20 million mobile phone subscriptions in Australia – or one for every man, woman and child in the country, representing near-saturation of the consumer market.

• Since 2000, Australia has had more mobile phone services than standard fixed telephones
• 2006 figures indicate that about 60% of Australian 12-13 year olds own a mobile phone.
• Approximately 10 million mobile phones were sold in Australia last year.

What does this near-saturation of the Australiam mobile phone market mean for m-learning in Australia? Well, for one thing, it is possible that there’s a greater imperative – and opportunity – for us to explore and implement m-learning strategies in Australia than for our American counterparts. It’s also possible that Australian organisations who are currently implementing m-learning strategies have an opportunity to lead the world in new and innovative learning strategies through m-learning.

Mind you, Australia is still a long way – perhaps three years – behind countries like Korea and Japan in terms of mobile consumer technology. I also keep tabs on these mobile technology powerhouses, with many of the technologies they already take for granted yet to emerge elsewhere – technologies with considerable potential to impact on social practices and educational strategies around the world, including in Australia.

technorati tags:gadgets, m-learning, mlearning, mobile learning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, education, cellphone, smartphone, pda, digital, devices, portable, ipod, media player, technology

Many readers of this blog will be educational innovators and early adopters, who will, at times, have been required to communicate the concepts and workings of digital mobile devices and mobile learning methods to colleagues, clients, and students, and provide support to those taking up this technology for the first time.  Sounds like you?  Then you will love this video, in which the novel (no pun intended) invention of the “book” is demonstrated:

Introducing the book

[via Ewan McIntosh]

technorati tags:humour, humor, innovation, book, youtube, mlearning, m-learning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, mobile learning

Very exciting!  The international conference on mobile learning, MLearn, is to be hosted here in Australia between 16-19 October 2007, in Melbourne (my favourite city in Australia even though I live in Canberra):

This conference will appeal to a wide range of audiences who are interested in enhancing learning, designing content and developing systems for mobile devices and wireless networks. The following objectives serve to define and guide the structure and foundation of the MLearn 2007 Conference.

• To promote the development of mobile learning
• To stimulate critical debate on & research into theories, approaches, principles & applications of mobile learning
• To share local & international developments, experiences & lessons learned.
• To promote networking & business opportunity development.
• To encourage the study & implementation of mobile applications in teaching & learning.
• To stimulate & assist personal professional development &  the development of new skills for educators.
• To provide a forum for education & knowledge transfer.
• To facilitate dialogue, sharing & networking between diverse cultures with regard to the optimum use of emerging technologies.
• To bring together providers of technology & services with educators and instructional designers.

The conference has now issued a call for papers, which can be submitted electronically via the conference website.  I hope to see many of you there!

technorati tags:mlearn, m-learning, mlearning, mobile learning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning

If you didn’t believe that mobile phones could be useful tools for students to access information, just look at the amount of press that the use of mobile phones to cheat in exams gets.

But I think the behaviour warrants closer analysis. I wonder if the same mobile, digital techniques that students use to cheat in the exam room could easily be converted into constructive formal and informal methods of learning delivery outside of it. Techniques such as SMS-ing a peer, storing cheat notes in phone memory – and other ingenious methods that educators have surely not yet discovered – are surely a form of just-in-time, just enough, where and when it’s needed ways to store and recover information.

Which might be exactly what we, as educators, would like our students to be able to do – though usually, well before they get to the doors of the exam room…

Part of the reason I mention the possibility of links between ways that students record information for themselves, and methods for teaching and learning, is that some ten years ago, when I was studying Law and Computer Science at ANU, I learned HTML, and applied its use to the creation of hyperlinked notes for my legal subjects. While this was well before I had any understanding of educational design or pedagogy, it was still, at the time, a groundbreaking way to bring notes into the (open book) law exams – almost without exception, every one of my peers in law school still used the old reams-of-paper-with-coloured-sticky-tabs method, or at best, a Microsoft Word document on their laptop. Today, the idea of hyperlinked notes is probably much more commonplace, even in very traditional subjects like Law.

So: how are students, savvy with mobile technology, using mobile devices to help themselves with their learning in the present day?

technorati tags:m-learning, mlearning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, mobile learning, exams, examinations, cheating, cheats, exam, examination

Who do I go and see if I’ve got an idea for a mobile device?

Bringing together the ideas of augmented reality, wearable technology, and mobile learning, here’s a concept for an m-learning device that allows the learner to “see” and interact with learning opportunities and activities in real-time and in their immediate physical context, thanks to a curved, flexible, transparent, wearable LCD screen that can be stowed over-the-head when not in use.

The outside of the visor is a touch screen, enabling direct interaction with the visor without removing it or having to blindly grope for buttons on one’s ears. Using image recognition as well as a built-in camera, GPS and compass, the unit can determine appropriate learning materials, according to the user’s preferences.

Update: Textually.org recently referred to an article from The Economist, with some similar predictions for the future, including an eerily similar vision of where mobile technology, augmented reality, and wearable technology could intersect:

technorati tags:m-learning, mlearning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, mobile learning, image recognition, augmented reality, wearable technology, mobile phone, cellphone, design, concept, design concept, touch screen, touchscreen

I’ve been asked for advice on choosing a PDA for teaching and learning by a number of other educators, and I wrote this as an off-the-cuff response to one such enquiry. I’ll try to write something more formal at a later date!

The PDAs that are best suited to a student group’s learning needs will depend on the kinds of activities you’d like them to be able to accomplish. However, if you’re “exploring” all of the possibilities, get a pretty fully-featured PDA so that you can try out lots of different approaches without limitations – ideally, you’d even get two PDAs so that you can also experiment with connecting them together to share information between mobile devices over a wireless network.

The following attributes of PDAs are in rough order of importance for teaching and learning purposes (in my personal opinion!).

Connectivity

My personal philosophy regarding mobile learning places connectivity as one of the fundamental functionalities of most m-learning activities. This is because connectivity (to both information/resources, and people) enables the ad-hoc sharing and retrieval of information – supporting a social constructivist approach to learning. With connectivity options, a mobile learner can retrieve “just in time” learning from a remote source – they don’t have to load software or information onto their device before they head out the door. They can also exchange information with other users on the fly, for example, in a classroom or in the workplace, without having to use an intermediary computer to do so.

Connectivity is enabled by:

• Most primitively, a mobile device can be connected to a PC via a cable. This isn’t very mobile, but can be quite practical – for example, to backup a mobile device’s contents, or to store information that has been gathered using the mobile device.
• Also primitive, exchange of information between devices can be achieved by sharing a common solid-state memory format. This is like swapping floppy disks to transfer information.
  • Most PDAs use Secure Digital (SD) cards… however, there are three different sizes! (Adaptors are available to enable smaller SD formats to be read in larger SD card readers – but obviously, not the other way around).
    • “MicroSD” (Transflash) cards, which have a maximum capacity of about 2GB (although I’ve only seen 1GB cards sold in Canberra). Writing to and deleting data
      regularly from these reduces their lifespan.
    • “MiniSD” cards, which have a maximum capacity of about 4GB (although I’ve only ever seen 3GB cards sold in Canberra). I believe these may also have issues with writing and deleting.
    • SD cards (full size) have a maximum capacity of 8GB (only seen 2GB cards sold in Canberra). They are the most durable of the SD form factors.
• Wireless connectivity allows devices to share information by sending it through the air – without any solid-state mechanism. Wireless connectivity can be used to share information with normal PCs, as well as many other mobile devices.
  • Infra-red is a legacy (old) technology. It’s slow and requires line-of sight between the devices to exchange information, with a maximum distance of about 2 metres. Exchange of information over infra-red is free of any cost.
  • Bluetooth is a “personal” wireless technology based on radio waves, and does not require line-of-sight alignment. It’s faster than infra-red, but only works within 10 metres of other devices, and cannot be used to access Internet services. Exchange of information over Bluetooth is free of any cost. Bluetooth is commonly found in mobile phones as well as PDAs, enabling a mobile phone to function as an “extension” of a PDA – for example to take photos, video, send and receive messages, or even connect a PDA to the Internet.
  • WLAN (a.k.a Wi-Fi or 802.11) is a “local” wireless technology based on radio waves, and does not require line-of-sight alignment. It’s even faster than Bluetooth, and works out to about 100m (more or less, depending on the number/types of barriers between connected devices). The fastest, longest-range WLAN currently deployed in mobile devices is “802.11g”… however, a new “802.11n” protocol is on the way that would enable WLAN devices to communicate over, potentially, several hundred metres. This would be, however, a hardware, rather than a software, upgrade (would require additional/new hardware to be purchased to upgrade). WLAN can be used to connect mobile devices over longer distances. WLAN functionality is rarely found in mobile phones (though it is available in some). Connecting devices using WLAN is free of charge. WLAN can also be used to connect devices to the internet using a “Wireless Access Point” (a.k.a. “Hotspot”) In these cases, connection to the wireless access point is free, but access to the Internet may entail some cost. There are free wireless access points in Canberra – notably, the “NERDBAND” network at the Pancake Parlour in Civic, and Café Del Marco in Dickson, as well as in many other cities (e.g. Australian on Collins shopping mall in Melbourne). Voice-Over-IP and many messaging programs work on WLAN-connected devices to enable communication with other people over the Internet or between locally networked units.
  • 2G Mobile Phone access is enabled in most Symbian devices (Nokia phones) and in many Windows Mobile smartphones. It allows a PDA to be used like a mobile phone, to make and receive calls, messages, and access the Internet using GPRS or EDGE (faster than GPRS) technologies. You get connectivity anywhere you have a mobile phone signal. However – connectivity *always* costs money.
  • 3G Mobile Phone access is the latest in mobile connectivity. It’s the fastest of all of the connectivity options here and has the widest availability – you can access other people and information services anywhere you have a signal, and it’s fast enough to make video calls and practically download rich media such as audio and video. Connectivity always costs money.

Camera

Many mobile devices such as phones and PDAs now come with an integrated camera. These do an increasingly better job, with the best mobile devices packing 3.2 megapixel cameras (good enough to take A5 photo-quality snaps) – although these are found in mobile phones, it won’t be long before these are in PDAs, which currently have a maximum resolution of about 2 megapixels. All camera devices I’m aware of take both photos and video. These can be used for many learning activities, such as recording procedures for later review, or recording a learner doing a task for later, or remote, assessment. I’d regard a built in camera with a minimum resolution of 1.3 megapixels as a very useful feature in a mobile learning device.

Battery Life

This can be really, really important. If the batteries die, it doesn’t matter what features your PDA has… it’s only good as a paperweight. Choose a model with a reasonable battery life, and turn off or turn down features you aren’t using: wireless connectivity, bright screen, and running the processor at full speed all (dramatically) reduce battery life, by as much as 75%. Buy a second battery and always keep it charged and on hand. This will also extend the life of your PDA, as it will reduce battery fatigue that comes with charging and discharging a single battery.

Platform

There are three main platforms for “smart” digital devices at the moment:

• Palm specialise in a PDA-based system, Palm OS, which uses a stylus to interact with the device.
• Nokia make “smartphones” based on the Symbian OS, which do not use a stylus to interact with the device.
• “Pocket PCs” use the Windows Mobile OS, which has both PDA and “smartphone” variants, and usually uses a stylus to interact with the device.

There are pros and cons to each platform. I personally use a Windows Mobile-based PDA – if you try out a few PDAs and prefer this platform, I recommend the latest version (Version 5) – the previous version (2003) has some inherent flaws that have been addressed by Version 5.

Choice of platform is likely to be influenced by what software you choose to run (some programs only work on one platform), and how much you like the interface each OS presents. There’s also an issue with social compatibility: if most other people at an organisation have Windows Mobile devices, you might like to also choose a Windows Mobile device so that you can swap recommendations on software, for example.

Screen/Display

Three factors here are important: the resolution, and the physical size, and the image quality.

• Resolution affects how sharply images and text are rendered on the screen – higher resolution means more information can be displayed on the screen, and more crisply.
• However, the actual physical size of a mobile screen is more likely to be an issue for accessibility reasons. Smaller screens squeeze text and images into a smaller frame, making them more difficult to read or view. If eyesight is an issue, larger screens can be easier to use, even with less resolution, that a high-resolution screen that’s very small.
• Screen quality is to do with how well colours display on the screen, and how bright the backlight is. Brighter backlit screens are easier to read in well-lit environments than poorly backlit ones. Choose a bright screen if you’re likely to be using the PDA in daylight, for example. You can reduce the brightness on PDA screens to conserve batteries.

Performance

The speed of the processor, the amount of memory, and the amount of built-in storage capacity affect a mobile device in much the same way as they do a normal desktop PC… the higher the better.

These are just some initial thoughts – I will try to put together something more formal for other teachers when they’re evaluating PDAs for teaching and learning, but I hope this helps somewhat!

Make sure your curriculum is up to date especially when teaching math, technology or biology as these fields are constantly evolving.

technorati tags:pda, education, m-learning, mlearning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, mobile, learning, m, evaluating, teaching, assessment, clcommunity, talo

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Marcus Ragus, an TAFE Tasmania educator who’s been involved in Australian m-learning projects for some years, launched a new site for m-learning practitioners last week.

Registration is free, and although it’s very quiet on the site at the moment, hopefully things will get more lively as more people learn about the site, join up, and start chatting in the community forum. In the meantime, there’s always the EdNA forum on m-learning which stimulated a great deal of discussion last month, if you want to see the latest news and views from many Australian (and international) educators.

technorati tags:m-learning, network, mlearning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, forum, community

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